The Barn, Exmouth

The Barn, in Exmouth, Devon, England, is a seaside house, now a hotel, dating from 1896 and designed in Arts and Crafts style by the architect Edward Schroeder Prior. It is a Grade II* listed building.

Prior's most influential and perhaps extraordinary building, the house demonstrates all of Prior’s concerns at the time. It was reported in Hermann Muthesius’s The English House of 1904–05 and gained considerable fame. Indeed, Muthesius adapted the plan for his Freudenberg House in Berlin of 1907–08 and the house influenced architects such as Thilo Schroder, Otto Bartning and Bruno Taut.

Based on what became known as a butterfly plan, the design was similar to that of a cottage model exhibited to considerable acclaim by Prior at the Royal Academy in 1895. It is possible that Prior got the commission as a result of the model being seen by the client, Major Henry Wetherall. However Wetherall was an Old Harrovian and had known the Priors all his life.

The Barn has two wings radiating from a central six-sided, double-height hall. The house is orientated to the south. The garden side is broken to capture the sun between the two wings. The east wing contains the dining room which faces the garden, kitchen and service quarters. The west wing contains the drawing room, study and staircase. A gallery over the hall connects the bedrooms in the east and west wing on the first floor. A central stair leads from the first floor to the attic rooms, that were additions to the scheme depicted in the model. The attic rooms were originally nurseries. Other alterations to the model scheme included a basement darkroom and a lift, and floor level changes to accommodate the site's topography.

The house is designed to be orientated to the sun and views. Its butterfly plan enabled Prior to make the best use of the site and to integrate the house and garden. The wings embrace the entrance courtyard at the front, and at the back open up the house into the garden through a roughed verandah. Prior designed the house and the garden as a whole scheme. Prior described the aims of this planning and aesthetic:

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